


The One Who Toils

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Series: The Travellers Toward the Sea [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, Les Travailleurs de la mer | Toilers of the Sea - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Canonical Character Death, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Double Penetration, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Forced Orgasm, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Other, Overstimulation, Post-Canon, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 05:08:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10690356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: On a beach in Guernsey, Marius has an encounter with an old friend and a stranger.





	The One Who Toils

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



Marius stood on the rocky beach at Soldier's Bay, staring out into the dark sea. Behind him loomed the cliffs of Guernsey's eastern coast and the stone embrasures of Fort George, the newly constructed British garrison. 

The moon was high, casting its light across the darkness of the ocean. Under the stars, it was difficult to tell where the sea ended and the night sky began. 

The beach was quiet and isolated. It was a far cry from the crowded boardwalk of Fermain Bay, where he and Cosette had spent the afternoon, amongst throngs of Guernseyan families and their children all enjoying the summer sun. 

It was so strange, he could not remember how he had come to be here at Soldier's Bay. He knew this beach was a stone's throw from their summer residence at No. 38 Hauteville, traversed by a path along the high cliffs, but he did not recall passing Fort George, nor climbing down the narrow, rocky path onto this moonlit beach.

The tide had started to come in, tracing patterns on the shore. The rhythm of the waves was at once peaceful and mesmerising. 

"Always wanted to see the English channel," Courfeyrac said, at his side. "It's beautiful. Think I might go for a little swim."

Marius turned to look at his beloved friend, who had kicked off his boots and was starting to take off his shirt. Under the strange moon, Courfeyrac's skin was glowing with a pallor it had not held in life. 

"Aren't you --?" His voice deserted him; he couldn't continue.

Courfeyrac pulled his trousers off, and then he paused. "Yes, I am. As I’ve been, every time you stopped to make sure," he said, gently. He touched Marius' face with fingers that burned. "But don't let that discourage you from thinking about me."

He turned away, clad only in his small clothes, and waded into the ocean.

"Where are you going?" Marius asked, his heart in his mouth.

Courfeyrac did not turn around. He raised his hand in a jaunty wave, and then dived into the water.

His heart hammering uselessly, Marius kicked off his trousers and shoes and went into the ocean after his friend.

The water was cold and clear. In the bright moonlight from the water’s surface, Marius could see the rocky sea bed and its proliferation of underwater vegetation, all signs of vibrant marine life. Ahead of him, he caught a glimpse of something pale that might be Courfeyrac.

The current carried him downward and outwards, closer to the sea bed where the water was cooler. The shoots of the aquatic plants waved in the current, mosses and limpets nestled against the troughs of the sea floor. 

As he swam, his eye was drawn to an enormous plant growing between the jutting rocks below. It spread its swaying fronds like a thick fringe of seaweed, a green so dark it was almost black, with innumerable flowers of blue. 

Combeferre would have been interested in this unusual species of underwater plant, and the undulating movement its fronds described in the water. Courfeyrac would have teased Marius about how easy he was to distract. Enjolras' eyes had been the same colour as the flowers: a shade of blue that was too bright for this world.

In that moment, Marius felt the mossy shoots of the plant brush against him. It was almost as if the plant’s fronds sought to twine gently around his arms and legs, to tangle him in a playful embrace and bind him in broad green ribbons to the sea bed.

The tendrils caressed his bare skin, and then he realised he was not alone in the ocean.

Something unfurled itself from the sea bed, vast and cloudy and many-limbed, with inky, sinewy appendages that reached out to him almost as if in greeting. 

The dark appendages touched him and then curled around his body, two winding first around his wrists and then another two around his ankles. A fifth limb, long and undulating, felt its way about his breast like a sea-snake; a sixth insinuated itself sinuously around his waist.

Surprising himself, Marius was not afraid. Even more surprisingly, he found the touch of the creature not unpleasant; it was as if he was floating in a warm, welcoming cloud, tethered to the sea bed by a presence that he found himself welcoming in turn. 

At the heart of the tentacles was a hazy, bulbous mass, which emerged from the rocks and drifted in the water toward Marius. He could make out cephalopod eyes that were not the piercing red that he would have imagined of sea-creatures, but instead the warm blue of his friend's. 

And Marius heard a deep rumbling sound in his mind, the sound of waves upon the shore, as if the ocean itself had decided to speak to him.

_Welcome. Accept breath, accept life._

Marius felt something press against his mouth, a protrusion that was at once hard and pliant. Marius accepted the strange kiss, and drank down the offered air, feeling his throat and lungs swell with the creature’s breath.

 _Who are you?_ he thought, tentatively.

He did not know if he truly expected a reply, but the voice within him furnished him with one all the same, the words inserting themselves invitingly in his mind. _One who toils beneath the sea._

Marius was not sure where he had heard that term before. He tasted the hot, briny exhalation of the ocean-creature, and wondered what had summoned it from the depths of the ocean that bordered the island of Guernsey. 

The tentacles around his body shifted restlessly as if in time with his thoughts. After a long pause, even though Marius sent nothing, came the response, slow and wry. _You called me to you, your hidden fears like a beacon._

Marius did not understand what the creature meant. What was it about Marius that had drawn this mysterious being to him? Why had he been chosen now, and for this uncertain purpose?

The limbs of the creature started to move, over the thin fabric of his wet shirt and then slipping underneath, against his bare skin. A tentacle slid up his groin and stroked against his manhood, over his small clothes, and abruptly, Marius was made aware of the creature's purpose. 

A spike of apprehension ran through him, despite his earlier fearlessness, and he choked against the protrusion in his mouth, gagging on the creature’s breath. 

The presence pressed against his mind, surrounding him with insistent warmth. _Forget your guilt. Lose yourself for a time. Receive this gift._

Marius was no longer as naïve as he once had been; he did not believe that the creature had no purpose other than to help Marius forget his great sorrow. But in this moment, in the open sea and the ocean's embrace, he found he did not much care, and he allowed himself to relax against the pliant limbs that encircled him.

 _All sea and sky and those living under will accept my gift,_ the creature sent, and the tentacles began to undress him, pulling his shirt from his shoulders and peeling his small clothes from his hips and legs, until he was bare in the water. 

Then the limbs moved from his ankles to his thighs in a muscular slide that slowly pulled his legs apart. Yet another member, seemingly shorter and thicker than the others, snaked its way around his hips to curl around his arse, leaking a viscous, sticky fluid that was so different from the surrounding sea-water.

Marius gasped in pleasure as the other tentacles stroked over his bare body; they slid across his breast and down his belly, and finally curled themselves around his prick, which had hardened to full mast. Marius had believed sea-creatures to be cold-blooded, but these tentacles were warmer than any human’s limbs, and lined with suckers that dug into and released against his skin. The thick, leaking member stroked between his buttocks in insistent circles.

Marius gave himself over to the strange pleasure, letting himself be cradled in comfort, feeling his own desire begin to rise in a burgeoning cloud that matched the creature’s strange heat.

The tendrils around Marius's body tightened, the suckers sinking into the undefended flesh of Marius’ inner thighs and chest, tugging at the nubs of his nipples. The tentacles stroked the length of Marius' sex, and the swollen appendage, slick with the strange fluid, pressed between Marius’ buttocks into his hole.

_Open to me. Receive my gift._

Marius groaned, overcome by the strange and yet familiar sensation. No hand had breached him since Courfeyrac’s playful one, certainly not that of his virginal bride, and he had forgotten how overwhelming it felt, having someone inside him; forgotten how quickly all control would be stripped from him, how vulnerable he would be to this blissful conquest.

He was stretched open, the creature’s appendage thrusting into him mercilessly, impaling him, as the other tendrils held him fast, as his mouth was still captured by the creature's kiss. Marius felt himself shuddering violently, wracked with pleasure, the muscles coiling and sliding within him and around him, entering each opening of his body and filling him with otherworldly need.

Thoughts of his bride were for once very far from his mind. Thoughts of his friends, his friend... Marius felt his eyes fill with tears, although he was so overwhelmed he could not say if he wept from old grief or from this new and all-consuming desire.

 _Receive me, be mine,_ the creature sent, and in that moment Marius was, completely; he had travelled so far with his burdens that it was sheer relief to yield them at last. 

He felt his orgasm gathering, irresistible and fatal, and he was helpless to stop it, to do anything save surrender. He cried out as it engulfed him, wrecking him easily, his release ripped from him by the overpowering force that ravaged coasts and tore sea-beds asunder. 

He felt himself shoot into the abyss; he felt the tears fly off his face; he felt a massive, heady gush within, and then the whiteness of the void.

 

 

Marius returned to himself slowly, incrementally. He opened his eyes to a dimly-lit room; he took a shuddering breath and smelt the briny tang of salt air. The ornate room and the bed he lay in were unfamiliar. Dizzy and disorientated, for a moment he thought himself still under the sea, possessed by the jealous ocean.

What was familiar was the woman in bed with him, holding him in her arms, securing him on dry land. 

“You were dreaming,” Cosette said sleepily. She brushed his hair from his face, and stroked his cheek. “Are you all right?”

Marius struggled to re-orientate himself. He was not in the open sea, but in bed with his wife. This was not their room at Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; instead, the master bedroom at No. 38 Hauteville, in Guernsey, where they had been spending the summer as the Ozannes’ guests. 

He pressed Cosette’s hand, and then sat up in bed and threw back the covers. His heart was pounding uncontrollably, his limbs felt weak, he had the distinct fear that he had released over himself in the night like any unschooled youth … and yet his nightshirt was not wet with spend, and his manhood lay quiescent against his thigh.

Had he been dreaming? Were his feet sandy from yesterday’s activities, or from a midnight encounter with something that had summoned him from his dreams?

He turned to his wife, making an effort to smile at her. “Did I wake you?”

Cosette murmured, "Only just now. You were muttering something about a pieuvre... I don't know what that word means."

"It's a sea-octopus," Marius said, and then wondered how he knew that.

Cosette frowned, and then pulled herself into a sitting position as well, pushing her thick hair behind her ears. She rubbed his shoulders comfortingly. "Like the painting in the attic? Were you dreaming about this pieuvre?"

Marius remembered the attic, fashioned after a ship's cabin, and the inky painting that hung ominously on one of its walls. "Perhaps. That is... I can't remember." 

And in truth, he could not remember much at all, save in haphazard snatches –- flashes of guilt, the sensation of dark coils and darker satisfaction, and a presence that sought to claim him, that were already fading from his mind.

He heard himself say, idly, "Let's go out for a sail later? Perhaps we can rent a boat from Havelet Bay."

Cosette folded him in her arms. As he drifted into sleep again, he could feel the gritty sand clinging to his toes, could almost smell the salt sea upon his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Mss M for the speedy beta!
> 
> Hope you enjoy this treat, within_a_dream! Your prompt was irresistible. Tentacles are my secret pleasure, and tentacles are canon for Victor Hugo fandom!


End file.
